


Upside-Down

by queenkrazykat



Series: Love and War [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Azazel Being an Asshole (Supernatural), Azazel's Special Children (Supernatural), Background Dean Winchester, Episode: s02e21 All Hell Breaks Loose, F/M, Minor Original Character(s), Mystery, Original Character(s), Plot Devices, Plot Twists, Post-Episode: s02e21 All Hell Breaks Loose, Protective Sam Winchester, Sam Winchester Being Sam Winchester, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, Some Plot, Superpowers, Tragedy, Weird Plot Shit, Young Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:40:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28337856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenkrazykat/pseuds/queenkrazykat
Summary: Emma Stallard has led a normal life, until, one day, she gets plucked from her apple-pie life and thrust into the world of demons, angels and monsters. In a split-second, her life turns upside-down and Emma must adapt quickly if she wants to survive. [Based on: 2x21 All Hell Breaks Loose Part I]
Relationships: Ava Wilson & Original Female Character(s), Dean Winchester/Original Female Character(s), Sam Winchester & Original Female Character(s)
Series: Love and War [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2075211
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

It happened in the blink of an eye, as the most tragic things often do. One minute, she was driving home in her car, her brother riding in the seat next to her, the wind tangling her hair, music blasting from the radio… the next, she was here.

For the first few minutes, Emma’s thoughts were a complete jumble—a kaleidoscope of worry, fear and bewilderment. Had she just… teleported out of her brother’s car? No, of course not. Was this a dream, then? Or a hallucination?

She shut her eyes and pinched herself hard. _It’s just a dream_ , she told herself. _Any minute, I’ll wake up and I’ll be in the car again…_

She opened her eyes. Nothing had changed. She was still standing in the same, dusty, deserted town, with dead leaves skittering across the ground like rats. Her surroundings seemed strangely faded, as though a giant, omniscient hand had erased all the color out of it; dilapidated houses leered at her with their open doorways and broken windows.

Panic crashed into her with the force of a tidal wave. Frantically, she looked around, hoping to see someone, _anyone_ —and then, she heard voices.

Emma followed the sound, tripping over rusted piles of wood overgrown with grass. The owners of the voices were actually a lot closer than she had thought—they were standing right around the nearest house, four of them.

For a moment, Emma and the little group simply stared at each other. One of them—a tall man with brown hair—stepped away from the group. “Hey! Are you alright?”

For a moment, Emma couldn’t speak. Then the questions tumbled out of her. “Who are you? Why am I here?”

The tall man shrugged, looking back at the others. They all looked to be about Emma’s own age. “Your guess is as good as ours.”

“Who are you?” Emma said again.

“I’m Sam,” the tall stranger said. He moved with an awkward sort of grace, as though he had never quite gotten used to his height.

“Emma,” Emma replied. Her voice sounded strangely far away to her own ears. “How did I get here?” she said. “One minute, I’m driving home with my brother, and the next…” Her next words tumbled out in a rush as her stomach twisted with fear. “My brother… he was in the car with me! What happened to him?”

“No idea,” Sam said. “I’m sorry.” He sounded sincere about it too.

“If it makes you feel any better,” one of the others piped up, “I went to sleep last night in Afghanistan.” The speaker was clearly a military man—dressed in the typical military uniform, powerfully built, with a long, pale scar on the left side of his face that was in stark contrast to his dark brown skin. There was something strangely magnetic about his gaze, and Emma wriggled under it.

“I’m taking a wild guess here—you’re twenty-three?” Sam said suddenly.

“Um, yes,” Emma said, taken aback. “How did you—”

“And you have abilities, don’t you?”

The question hit Emma in the stomach like a bowling ball. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Look, it’s okay,” Sam said, raising his hands in a placating gesture. “We all do.”

Emma wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream for her brother, run away, tell them they were crazy. But she did none of those things. Instead, she took a deep breath and said, “Did it start about a year ago?”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “I have visions. I see things before they happen.”

“Me too,” the woman said. The only one who hadn’t spoken so far—a friendly-faced man with disheveled hair and baggy clothes—said excitedly, “I can put thoughts into people’s heads. Don’t worry, I don’t think it works on you guys,” he added, seeing Emma’s alarmed look. “Plus, I’ve been practicing! So now, it’s not just thoughts, I can beam out images too! This one guy I know—total dick, right? I used it on him—gay porn. All hours of the day.” He laughed. “You should have seen the look on his face.”

Everyone simply looked perplexed, except for Sam, who shot him a mildly exasperated look. “Seriously, Andy?”

What can you do?” the soldier said suddenly, and rather aggressively, to Emma.

Emma stared at the little group. They all stared expectantly back at her. “This is crazy,” she said finally. “This is some weird hallucination, or a dream, or-or—”

“Emma, this is none of those things,” Sam said. “This is very real.”

“Fine!” Emma snapped, losing patience. “If this is real, who brought us here? Are you suggesting that we all just _appeared_ here? Just like that?”

Sam bit his lip. “It’s more like… someone brought us here.”

“Who?” the woman demanded.

Sam hesitated. “Actually, it’s less of a who. It’s... more of a _what_.”

“Okay, so _what_ brought us here?”

Sam straightened his shoulders. “Did any of you notice anything weird? Weird smells or anything… right before you arrived here?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” the soldier demanded.

“Bear with me, Jake,” Sam said. He looked around at the others. “Did you?”

“Well…” Andy shrugged. “There was this weird smell…”

“Like sulfur?”

“Yeah… how did you know?”

Emma thought back to her last few moments in the car. She hadn’t noticed any weird smells, had she? But no, she remembered with a pang—she _had_ noticed a weird, chemical-like smell, and she had reached over to check the air vents…

“Okay so, sulfur,” Jake said gruffly. “What’s so special about sulfur?”

“Well.” Sam gave a complicated little shrug. “That means a demon brought us here.”

* * *

“This is insane!” Jake roared, right in Sam’s face. Sam was at least half a foot taller than Jake, but Jake didn’t seem too perturbed by this. “Are you seriously trying to convince us that we’re soldiers in some—in some demon war? To bring on the _Apocalypse_?”

I know how it sounds—”

“It sounds crazy!” the woman shrieked suddenly. She had been mostly quiet up until that moment, so hearing her speak was rather startling. She had a shrill voice, and her front teeth stuck out slightly, reminiscent of a chipmunk. She turned to Emma. “Don’t tell me you’re buying into this!”

Emma opened her mouth to reply, but Sam, it seemed, had reached the end of his tether. “Ava, I don’t really care what you think, okay?” he interrupted. His voice had risen to a near shout. “If we’re all gathered here together, then that means it’s starting and that we’ve got to—”

“The only thing I’ve _got to do_ is to stay away from whack-jobs like you,” Jake said harshly, cutting off Sam in mid-sentence. “I’ve heard enough. I’m better off on my own. And,” he added, turning to glare at everyone else, “so are you.” He turned his back on them and strode away.

“Jake, hold on!” Sam yelled after him. “Jake!”

Jake didn’t look back.

“I’ll go get him,” Sam huffed irritably. He muttered something else under his breath—Emma couldn’t quite catch it, but she was sure she heard the word _idiot_ —and jogged after him.

“This is…” Emma couldn’t think of a word to describe their situation. Crazy, insane, outrageous, weird, bizarre—these were words you used to describe a drunk man running naked through the street. They were words that put you safely out of the sphere of influence— _that w_ as crazy _, that_ was bizarre _._ You were safe, far away from it. Not smack-dab in the middle of it, as she was now.

She shook her head, trying to get rid of the feeling of unreality that had settled on her like a cobweb. “Do any of you have a phone by any chance?”

“No,” Andy said. “I mean, I was in the middle of my fourth bong hit when I arrived here.” He sighed. “I think Sam has one, but he wasn’t getting a signal.”

She turned to Ava. “Ava? Please tell me—”

“Don’t look at me,” Ava said. “I’m cleaned out. Apparently, I’ve been missing for five months.”

Emma scoffed. But Ava only raised her eyebrows at her in reply.

“Wait, you’re serious?”

“You better believe it, sister.”

They were interrupted by the sound of footsteps; Sam and Jake were walking back towards them. Sam was holding an iron poker and looked extremely grim, as though someone had just died. Jake, on the other hand, looked shell-shocked. His eyes held a far-away look, as though he wasn’t quite rooted in reality.

“What happened?” Andy demanded, pointing at Jake. “He looks like he’s seen a ghost.”

“Actually, he saw something much worse,” Sam said. “An Acheri demon.”

Emma shook her head. “You’ve got to be joking,” she said, fighting down a hysterical urge to laugh. But if it was a joke, neither Jake nor Sam were finding it funny in the slightest.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, nobody wanted to stick around after Jake’s supposed encounter with the Acheri demon. Ava was nearly hysterical with terror, and Andy kept pacing back and forth, throwing his hands up and down in frustration. Emma could only stand frozen to one spot, hands clasped tightly together. But Sam insisted, again and again, that they were safer as a group, that they would be killed if they tried to leave.

Finally, Jake, who had been standing silently by the corner, said, “Would you all just shut up?”

Everyone looked at him.

“Maybe it sounds crazy,” he said, turning to face everyone with his arms crossed. “All I know is I was attacked by something that was definitely not human. So how about we all just listen to what he says?” He jerked his head towards Sam as he spoke.

Emma massaged her temples. “For argument’s sake, let’s say a demon _did_ bring us here,” she said. “How do you _know_ it’s a demon?”

“Trust me,” was all Sam said.

“Trust you?” Emma demanded. “I hardly know you! For all we know, you could be behind this.”

Sam looked exasperated. “Fine, trust me, don’t trust me—I don’t care. Right now, we’ve got to gear up for the next attack.”

“Attack?” Ava said, her voice rising an octave. “We’re going to be attacked?”

Emma pressed her hand against her forehead. The cold skin of her palms seemed to calm the fury of emotions raging inside her. It was obvious that out of all of them, Sam was the only one who had any idea what he was doing. “Tell us what we need to do,” she said.


	2. Chapter 2

Sam sent them out looking for salt, as much as they could find. “And weapons,” he added. “Anything made from iron, if you can find it.”

“ _Salt_ is a weapon?” Emma said.

“One of the best,” Sam replied, a little smirk appearing on his face, as though he was laughing at a private joke.

They agreed to ‘set up camp’, as Andy called it, in one of the few houses that were still standing, and then split up to look for supplies. Fortunately, the salt didn’t prove hard to find. Andy and Emma found two big bags of it in the rundown basement of what had once been a hotel. Emma had been dreading entering the basement—she was sure that it would be a haunt for the worst kinds of creepy-crawlies her nightmares could conjure up. But to her surprise, the basement was devoid of life. There were no insects, no spiders, no rats—not even mold.

As they hauled two big bags of salt back to the house, Andy waved excitedly to Sam, who was standing in the doorway, trying to get a signal on his cellphone. “Look! Salt!”

“That’s great, Andy,” Sam said distractedly. “I’d give an arm and a leg for a working mobile phone,” he added under his breath.

Andy dropped the salt bag he was holding and straightened with a sigh. “You know, you might not need to.”

Sam looked at him curiously. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve never tried it long-distance before, but do you have anything of Dean’s on you? Something he touched, maybe?”

Understanding dawned on Sam’s face. “You think you can send him a message, telling him where we are?”

Andy shrugged. “Worth a shot, right?”

“Who’s Dean?” Emma said, as Sam scrabbled around in his pockets.

“My brother,” Sam replied, extracting a scrunched-up piece of paper from his right jeans pocket. “Uh… I’ve got a receipt. Would that work?”

Andy took the receipt from Sam and peered at it. “D. Hasselhoff?” he said quizzically.

“Yeah, that’s Dean’s signature.”

“Alright.” Andy cleared his throat importantly, closed his eyes, and pressed his fingers to his temples. It was a bizarre, outlandish sort of gesture—the kind of thing one would see in a movie, and an oddly hypnotic process to watch.

“Did it work?” Sam said anxiously when Andy, at last, opened his eyes.

Andy’s face split into a grin. “I think so.”

* * *

As the sun dipped below the horizon, it took the warmth with it. Emma stuffed her hands into the pockets of her hoodie; the thin material didn’t offer her much protection against the cold, and she shivered slightly.

It was even colder in the barn. Emma pushed open the door, which creaked horribly in protest. “Sam?” she said tentatively.

“In here.”

She stepped into the barn, her shoes squelching on years’ worth of accumulated dirt and grime. Sam was half-hidden behind what appeared to be a giant, rotted pile of wood, and he was straining to pull out one of the iron bars that formed the part of some long-dead machine—a combine, Emma thought.

“I just wanted to let you know that, um, we’ve salted all the doors and windows,” she said.

“Great,” Sam huffed, his face screwed up with effort as he tried in vain to free the iron bars. But they didn’t move an inch, not even when he threw the weight of his full body against it, which was a considerable amount. Emma had not realized it before, but now that Sam had taken off his jacket, she could see that he too, like Jake, was well-built— and not to mention, about as tall as a giraffe.

“Those things are really welded in there, huh?” Emma said.

Sam dropped his hands and stepped back. “Yep,” he said.

“Let me try.”

Sam, who had taken hold of one of the bars again, stopped and looked at her with something like polite incredulity, though it was hard to tell in the dim light. But he relented and stepped back.

Emma concentrated her gaze on the rods, and flicked her wrist, feeling the familiar ache that came with it—the feeling that she’d just strained a muscle by working it too hard. With a crunching sound, several iron bars fell to the ground at Sam’s feet. Sam looked down, stunned, and then back up at Emma.

“It’s no big deal,” she said uncomfortably.

“So… it’s…?”

“Psychokinesis? As far as I can tell, yeah. There’s limits to it, though. I can’t use it on people or animals—anything living. I also can’t use it on anything that I can’t see.” She flexed her fingers. “Man, if I couldn’t do this… I don’t think I would have ever pulled myself together to gear up for a demon attack. It’s like—I’ve already seen crazy stuff, so what’s a little more?”

Sam glanced down at the bars at his feet. “Huh. Yeah, I know what you mean.”

They stood in awkward silence for a minute, and then Emma asked something that had been nagging at her ever since she had arrived. “How do you know so much about this stuff?”

Sam, who had bent to retrieve the iron bars, looked up at her. Some sort of painful internal struggle took place within him for a few seconds, and then he said, “My brother and I are hunters.”

“Hunters. Hunting…?”

“Ghosts. Demons. Any kind of monster, really.”

Emma couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. He didn’t _look_ like he was, at the very least. “So… they exist?”

“Boy, do they.” Sam chuckled lightly.

“How many are there?”

“Hundreds? Thousands? No idea. They keep reproducing and popping up all the time. A lot of them can pass off as human.”

Emma shuddered. The idea of ghosts and demons walking around, wearing the faces of ordinary, everyday people—maybe even people she knew—was terrifying.

 _Get it together, Emma_ , she told herself sternly. _Of course demons and ghosts don’t exist, they don’t exist because they_ can’t _…_

Sam was looking at her with some concern. “You okay?”

Emma simply nodded. Perhaps Sam realized he’d spooked her a little with his talk of demons and ghosts, because he scooped up the rest of the iron bars. “Come on. Let’s get this stuff upstairs.”

* * *

Night seemed to come all too quickly. By then, everyone was armed—if you could call having a rusted iron poker ‘armed’—and barricaded inside the house, in the only room that seemed habitable. Emma sat on the lumpy sofa with her hands pressed between her knees, trying to keep them from trembling. From the way Andy sat hunched up on the sofa, constantly jiggling his leg, and the way Jake kept getting up and walking around, and the way Sam never took his eyes off the windows and doors, she could tell they were just as high-strung as she was.

Ava was the only one who was motionless, sitting at the table and staring at the wood as if she would find the secrets of the universe etched in it. Her face was tear-streaked, her eyes red. When Sam had broken the death of her fiancé to her an hour or so before, she had sobbed relentlessly for about half an hour. Then she had sat down at the table, and had not moved since.

Emma had wanted to say something to her—but what could she say? Sorry? She hated people apologizing for things that weren’t their fault. Wearily, she buried her face in her hands, pressing against the dull, pounding pain that was developing over her left eye—signs of an oncoming headache.

She didn’t know how long she sat there like that, but when she looked up, they weren’t alone. A man was standing in the corner of the room, dressed in an unassuming array of clothes—cargo pants, shoes, a jacket. Only his eyes gave him away. They were a sickly yellow color, almost glowing in the dark.

Emma leapt to her feet in shock. “Sam!” she yelled, her throat closing up in fear. But Sam, who was still on high alert, gazing out of the window from his perch in the armchair, didn’t stir. Nobody gave any sign that they had heard her.

“Sam?” she said hoarsely.

“They can’t hear you, sweetheart,” the yellow-eyed man said. “You’re dreaming.”

Emma swallowed down her fear. Something about this intruder terrified her to her very bones. “Who are you?” she said. Her voice came out in a whisper.

The man smiled. It was a grotesque smile, the sides stretched far too wide for a normal human. Emma was reminded, vividly, of the Joker from Batman.

“Walk with me,” he said.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Song pairing** \- [AFRAID // NO WYLD](https://open.spotify.com/track/43JDjACx5jTdTx4cTXzONW?si=ZwuhFD5iQOaso_PrrzZx1g)

“You know, you’re awfully quiet,” the man said to Emma.

They were standing outside the house. Moonlight washed everything in a pale, ghostly light, throwing the man’s face into sharp relief—the wrinkles on his forehead, the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. The smile never left his face.

Emma looked away and pinched herself hard. He was right—she found it difficult to speak, and her thoughts moved at a snail’s pace. It was as though her head had been stuffed with cotton wool. “Who are you?”

“Your benefactor, of course.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Let’s just say you wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me.”

A cold, tingling feeling spread throughout Emma. “Are you… are you the-the demon?”

The yellow-eyed man smiled even more widely. “Ding ding ding! We have a winner, folks!”

“Why did you bring me here? What happened to my brother?”

The demon waved her questions away. “All in good time. But I’d be more worried about yourself, if I were you.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

For the first time, the demon looked surprised. “Of course not. Why would you think that?”

Emma had no reply to this. The demon tutted, as if he was genuinely hurt that she had thought he would kill her. “I’m here because I’m rooting for you. Welcome to the Miss America pageant!”

Emma was startled. “What?”

“Here are the rules for the competition. Number one, only one of you can make it out alive. That’s it! That’s the only rule!” He giggled like a schoolgirl.

“But I like you, Emma,” the demon continued. “And the way I see it—you’re at a disadvantage. The others have all had some inkling of the supernatural, you know?”

“Jake didn’t.”

The demon shrugged. “He’s a military man. And,” he chuckled lightly, “don’t forget the Acheri demon he met! Face it, you’re severely disadvantaged here. So, here’s what you’re going to do. I’m going to wake you up, and all the others will be asleep. You’re going to kill them in their sleep. Sound good?”

Emma was shaking her head before the demon finished speaking. “No way,” she said. “You’re crazy.”

The demon looked displeased. “I would have thought you’d take advantage of the situation, Emma.” He sighed. “This is more than just a chance to walk out alive—this is a chance to unlock your true potential! You have no idea what runs in your veins, my dear!”

“What? What does that mean?”

“And now, I think it is time for you to wake up.”

* * *

Emma jerked awake on the sofa. True to the demon’s word, the others were all asleep. Her heart was hammering in her ribs—a frightened bird trying to escape its cage. She buried her face in her hands, reliving her bizarre dream. Had it been real? Or had it been nothing more than a whacky nightmare, brought on by the strange circumstances?

She was so disoriented that it took her a few minutes to realize that something was wrong. Ava was missing. Her chair was overturned, lying on its side on the dusty floor. Thinking, hoping, that Ava was maybe in another room, Emma tiptoed to the doorway and peered out. The hallway was empty. “Ava?” she called softly.

No reply.

Emma ran a hand through her hair. Something about the situation unsettled her badly, but she didn’t want to wake the others for no reason. Maybe Ava had just gone out for a breath of fresh air? Or had she been kidnapped? Was she lying hurt and injured somewhere?

“Sam!” she said loudly. “Andy! Jake!”

Sam and Jake leapt to their feet, Sam already reaching for his iron rod. Andy stirred and sat up, his hair even more disheveled than before.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Sam said, wide-eyed.

“I think Ava is missing,” Emma said. “I woke up and she was just… gone.”

“How long has she been gone?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I just woke up…” Emma felt a little sliver of doubt. Maybe she was making a big deal out of nothing.

But Sam snapped to action almost immediately. “Jake, you scour the barn and the hotel,” he said authoritatively. “Emma and I will take the other houses. The ones still standing, anyway. Andy, you stay here in case she comes back, okay?”

Andy nodded. Sam handed Emma her iron poker. “Stay close to me,” he said quietly. “You see anything, you hit it as hard as you can, got it?”

Emma nodded. “Sounds simple enough.” She felt relieved to be going with Sam, and she didn’t envy Jake or Andy their responsibilities. Sam looked like he could take on pretty much anything.

Sam grinned a lopsided grin. “That’s the spirit.”

* * *

Scouring the houses was so nerve-wracking that Emma thought she might actually pass out at some point. She kept expecting something to jump out of every shadow, and once, she nearly lost her head when a lone rat, the only other living thing she had seen in the town, skittered across her foot.

And then they heard the screaming. Sam paused only long enough to give Emma a worried glance, and then he was off, streaking across the ground back to the house they had left, where the screams were coming from. He was so tall that Emma, despite being a rather fast runner herself, couldn’t keep up.

When she caught up to Sam, he was standing in the doorway, looking down at something on the floor, his mouth set in a grim line. Emma stepped around to look—and then stopped dead.

Andy. He was lying on his back, half of his torso ripped away. Blood had pooled around him, and Emma started as she realized she had actually stepped in it. For some reason, this was her breaking point—not the flesh lying in pieces on the ground, not the thick, metallic smell—but the fact that _she had stepped in his blood_. She had heard of things like this happening before—people having bizarre, completely illogical reactions in the face of trauma as their brain attempted to deal with whatever they were seeing.

As though from a great distance, she heard Sam say, “Where were you?”

Ava was standing in front of the window, rigid with terror. But she recovered enough to answer Sam’s question. “I just went to get some water from the well. I was only gone maybe, like, two minutes!” Her voice broke into sobs.

And then, through a haze of dizziness, Emma saw something else on the window sill—something that Sam had failed to notice because Ava was standing right in front of it, blocking his view—whether unwittingly or not, she didn’t know. “Ava?” she said, surprised to find that her voice was quite steady. “The salt… What happened to the salt?”

Ava whirled around in surprise. Sam strode forward, and then stopped dead. “The salt line is broken.” He looked at Ava. “Did you do that?”

Ava shook her head. “No! Maybe Andy—”

“Andy wouldn’t do that.” When Ava didn’t reply, Sam said, his voice hard with suspicion, “Ava, that line wasn’t broken when we left.”

Ava looked from Emma, who was standing there with fists clenched, to Sam, who was still staring at her. “What?” she said incredulously. “You don’t think that _I—_ ”

“I’ll tell you what I think,” Sam interrupted. “I think you’re the only one out of all of us who can’t account for the _five months_ you were missing.”

“What are you trying to say?!” Ava shrieked.

“What happened to you?”

“Nothing!”

But Sam didn’t back down; he continued to look at her, his eyes as hard and as empty as stone. Ava stared pleadingly at him for a few more seconds. Then, without warning, the fear was wiped from her face, to be replaced by a mildly exasperated look; the change happened so quickly it was rather disconcerting. “Had you going, though, didn't I?” she said with the merest hint of a laugh. She wiped away the tears from her eyes. “Yeah, I’ve been here a long time. And not alone, either. People just keep showing up. Batches of three or four at a time.”

“You-you killed all of them?” Emma said hoarsely.

Ava grinned. “I am the undefeated heavyweight champion.”

Emma felt sick. “Oh my God,” she muttered, trying to fight the urge to clutch her stomach.

Ava laughed. “Oh, God has nothing to do with this, sweetie. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

“How could you?” Sam demanded. “Why—”

“Ask _her_.” Ava jerked her head towards Emma. “She’s met the demon, she knows all about it.”

Sam turned to Emma. Emma was shaking her head, though she didn’t know why.

“Emma?” Sam said, his voice low, threatening, his eyes cold and dark.

Fear twisted in Emma’s gut. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just-I just didn’t have time to tell you.” She stammered something out about her encounter with the demon. “After that, I woke up, and—and that’s when I found out that Ava was gone,” she finished.

Sam turned back to Ava. “God damn it, Ava.”

Ava threw up her hands in exasperation. “Him again! I had no choice. It was me or them. Actually, I started to enjoy it after a while. I just stopped fighting it.”

“Fighting what?” Sam spat.

“Who we _are_ , Sam. If you'd just quit your hand-wringing and open yourself up, you have no idea what you can do. The learning curve is so fast, it’s crazy.” She snapped her fingers for effect. “The switches just flip in your brain.” She laughed. “I can’t believe I started out just having dreams. Do you know what I can do now?”

“Control demons,” Sam said between clenched teeth.

Ava gave Sam a sad little smile. “It was good knowing you guys,” she said. “But I’m afraid this is the end of the line for you.” She closed her eyes and pressed her hands to her temples. A cloud of black smoke materialized outside the window, right behind Ava. But it wasn’t the regular kind of smoke—it didn’t just drift passively; instead, it moved with purpose, yanking itself this way and that like a living thing. Absolute terror ran through Emma’s body, turning her blood to ice.

The smoke began to pour itself through the window, sliding neatly through the gap in the salt. And then something clenched instinctively in Emma’s gut. Sam’s iron poker, which was still in his hand, flew out of his grip and slammed into Ava, going straight through her chest and shattering the window behind. Ava gasped, her shocked gaze travelling from Sam to Emma, and finally down to the poker sticking out of her chest. Then her head dropped onto her chest, and she moved no more. The cloud of black smoke vanished.

“Was that-was that you?” Sam said into the deathly silence.

Emma could barely bring herself to nod.

“Okay,” Sam said, gathering himself. “Okay, we have to get out of here.” He made to leave, but Emma stood rooted to the spot, her feet seemingly stuck to the floor, mouth open, still staring at Ava. Sam grabbed her wrist. “Emma, we have to go!”

* * *

They ran out of the house, Sam clutching her wrist so hard that it hurt.

“Was that-was that—”

“A demon,” Sam panted. “Ava was controlling it. It should be gone for a few minutes, but it might come back at any moment.”

“But the yellow-eyed demon—he said we couldn’t leave—”

“To hell with him!” Sam yelled. “We need to get out of here _now_ , before—” he stopped abruptly, letting go of Emma’s hand. Jake stood in front of them, his expression strangely calm. Something glinted in his right hand.

“Jake,” Sam began.

“I’m sorry, Sam,” Jake said. “But Emma is right.”

“Jake, listen to me. _Don’t do this_.”

Jake lifted his arm, and Emma saw what he was holding in his hand—a knife, wickedly sharp and as long as his forearm. “I had a vision. That yellow-eyed demon or whatever it was, he talked to me. He told me how it was.”

“You can’t listen to him, Jake,” Sam said desperately.

“I liked you both,” Jake continued, as if Sam hadn’t spoken. “Really, I did. But if we don’t play by his rules, he’s going to kill us all. Better one of us make it out than none of us.”

Sam stepped forward, raising his hands in a placating gesture. “Listen to me, Jake. We can kill him together—”

Jake didn’t let him finish. He moved, so fast that he was little more than a blur, and punched Sam in the stomach. Emma shrieked as Sam went down, gasping and twisting from the pain. She tried to calm her nerves, to steady herself enough to use her psychokinesis, but even if she had managed to clear her head enough—there was nothing she could use it _on._ They were out in the open, on an empty field, easily a fifty yards away from the nearest house.

_His knife!_

She concentrated her gaze on it, and just as Jake raised the knife to use it on Sam, it slipped out of his grasp and hung, quivering, in the air. Jake snarled like a wounded animal, and rounded on Emma. “You shouldn’t have interfered, Emma.”

“Please, Jake—”

She couldn’t finish her sentence. Jake was on her already, his fingers squeezing her throat. Emma desperately tried to pry his hands away, but he was incredibly strong. With every breath she tried to take, he squeezed harder, making each breath harder than the last. The knife thumped on the grass.

Spots danced in her vision. Her grip was growing weaker, her thoughts jumbled. Behind Jake, she could just make out Sam’s blurred figure getting to its feet.

And then everything went black.


End file.
